An international rescue effort is underway in the Indian Ocean after a Chinese deep-sea fishing vessel with a crew of 39 capsized on Tuesday.
Chinese state news outlet Xinhua reported on May 17 that 39 mariners were missing after their fishing boat ran into trouble in a remote part of the Indian Ocean.
The vessel sent out a distress call and capsized in the early hours of May 16. The cause behind the vessel’s demise remains unknown.
While the hull of the ship was spotted in the water by a Panama-flagged bulk carrier called Navios Taurus, there has been no sign of the 17 Chinese, 17 Indonesian, and five Philippine crewmembers or of the vessel’s lifeboats.
The Chinese authorities have been joined by search and rescue teams from Australia, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka, according to Xinhua.
China has been the world leader in fish and seafood products for decades, accounting for approximately 35% of global volumes in 2020, according to Statista. Its volumes of seafood shipped abroad were worth roughly $22.6 billion in 2021, while the strong domestic demand reeled in an estimated retail market revenue of $75 billion that same year.
Yet behind the scenes of this highly profitable industry lies a need for China to fund a massive global fishing operation due to having depleted the fish stocks of its own coastal waters, according to The New York Times.
Over the past 20 years, China has been conducting industrial fishing in waters across the world, including around Africa, South America, the South Pacific, and the Indian Ocean.
It is estimated that China has a fishing fleet of 200,000 to 800,000 vessels, of which the country reported around 3,000 are for distant-water fishing while others put the number closer to 17,000, according to the Yale School of the Environment.
China’s industrial fishing activities have raised alarm among other nations and both local and international conservationist groups.
Many have accused Chinese fishing vessels of engaging in illegal activities, such as fishing in territorial waters, during which time they are said to disable their public tracking devices.
As the search goes on for the missing crew of the capsized Chinese vessel, President Xi Jinping ordered an investigation into the incident so as to curtail further risk in future deep-sea operations, according to Xinhua.
